talk. He would appear to be unkind. So he would take her in from the storm, give her shelter for a night or two, no more. Her beauty troubled him the most, so unexpected, the sweetness of her voice, the fragile bones of her hand as he helped her into the carriage. Who, then, was the woman in the picture? It troubled him, enough so that he was sharp with the horses and would not look her in the face.
“I have an automobile,” he said, for no reason. “It’s the only one in town.”
She didn’t know what to say.
“It’s not good in the snow.”
I am in the wilderness, she thought. Alone with barbarians.
They were leaving town, and the horses were skittish in the wind. He was never rough with them, and now he could feel their nerves through the leather. They just wanted to get where they were going.
Catherine saw, through the snow, the endless flat fields on one side and, on the other, a broad river, clogged with ice. So bleak and forlorn.
She thought of the lights of the city, the endless activity, the beer halls lit up in the snowy nights, the music, the laughter, the girls pinning on their hats and rushing out to find adventure. The girls would laugh in front of warm fires with men who had written them love letters. They would eat roast beef and drink champagne and rush everywhere, their dresses hiked to their knees as they ran through the snow, the laughing girls, drawn by the warmth of the gaming tables and the fires and the music and the company.
Here, out past the lights of the town, there was no sound. There was nothing except them, their carriage, the lanterns shiny on the road.
The river looked hard as iron.
She pictured the music hall girls. The men with decks of cards in their pockets and revolvers tucked in their boots. The sweetness of the languid air in the opium dens, warm when the night was too cold to move, the Chinaman waking them with tea when the storm had passed or the dawn had come or all the money was gone. The trolleys would already be running, taking people, normal people, to work. And the girls would laugh, knowing what a ruin they looked.
A million miles away. Another life, another night, a million miles down the slick black river to the bright and clanging city. Her friends were already decked for the night, seeking the heat, the music washing over them, their beautiful dresses, and laughing at her folly. She was already a thing of the past, to them. They had no memory.
The deer came out of nowhere, racing, bucking with terror, and was gone in an instant. They saw its frightened eyes for only a second, as its antlers brushed past the horses. Suddenly the world was in white chaos.
The horses leapt back in terror, charging upward in their traces, jerking the carriage sideways and almost over, righting it again as they bolted. Catherine heard a single shrill whinny, like a scream, and they were racing off, bits in their teeth, cracking ice flying from their manes, Ralph standing now, standing in his seat and pulling at the reins with all his strength. She felt the terrible chill, the awful dread of the thing she hadn’t expected.
The horses veered, pulling them off the road, the wheels cracking into new snow, a sound like a blade through bone. The carriage hurtled through a thin fence and everything was noise and chaos and Ralph had one leg up on the front of the carriage, screaming the horses’ names, pulling back, swearing, and the cold seemed sharper, and Catherine, terrified, holding on, rigid with fear, felt the cracking thud as the carriage hit a rut, the leftover gash of some autumn rivulet, and Ralph was thrown into the air, the reins flying. She saw him just long enough to see the iron rim of the wheel strike his head as he fell beneath the carriage, and then they were off, jolting and careening wildly, the horses wild, too, off the road now, heading toward the black river.
Catherine groped blindly. The reins whipped in the wind, but she found them, took them in her hands. The carriage rocked in the pitted field, but she held on. Her foolish cloak was streaming in the wind, choking her, and she ripped it from her neck and it flew out behind, a momentary ghost in the swirling snow.
She knew enough to let the horses run. She knew enough to hope in their natural instincts. Her strength was no match for the terror she felt pulsing from the horses’ black rumps. She held on. She did the only thing she could.
The horses raced on in a frenzy. They galloped down a small bank, skimmed onto the frozen river, the carriage arcing dangerously, so that the horses were spun in a circle, leaving crazy black trails on the powdered ice, really frightened now, aware, suddenly, of how far they were from safety. One of the horses slipped, lost its footing and collapsed onto the ice, which cracked and shimmered but held. Catherine sat mute with fear, with the idea of death in the frigid water, drowning, tangled in dying horses.
The river held. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. As the horses struggled to find their footing, she climbed the traces and lay along their steaming necks. As the black gelding stood again she was there, whispering in its ear, the words coming from somewhere and lost in the wind, but enough, whispering, holding her hand gently against the softest part of its throat.
The horses calmed beneath her hands, their panic passed. They heard her voice, barely audible above the howling wind, and they stood patiently as she inched her way back through the harness, her hands never leaving their flesh, never letting them forget that she was there, was in charge, promising them safe delivery.
She gently picked up the reins again and they walked, exhausted now, her eyes straining in the howling dark to pick up the ruts in the snow so she could tell where they had come from, driving them slowly back to the place where the deer had leapt out of nothing and sent the stillness flying into panic.
On the road again, the horses stood pitiful and defeated. The gelding almost collapsed, but pulled himself upright, and together the two horses hauled the carriage into the white blindness. Miraculously, the lanterns had held, and she could see a short distance ahead.
They almost ran over Ralph before she saw him. He stood calmly in the middle of the road, swaying a bit, blood streaming from a gash in his forehead, a gash deep as bone.
She jumped from the carriage. She hadn’t come all this way to have him die now. Not now. She caught the hem of her skirt on the edge of the seat, heard the quick tear of the cheap material as she almost fell into his arms. The blood covered his face, mixing with the snow clotted in the fur collar of his black coat. She took his elbow. He shook her off, but then he staggered, and she took his arm again and this time he didn’t push her away but leaned into her, so that she realized the size and solidity of him, the depth of his chest, even through his heavy coat the heat of his body was clear. She helped him to the seat, the blood streaming from his forehead. She found her cloak, her foolish thin cape, and covered his shivering legs.
“The horses all right?” His voice was strained.
“They can carry us.” She climbed up. “Which way, Mr. Truitt?”
“They know. Just let them go.” The horses moved forward, one limping and wheezing, and both blind in the night, but sure of their way.
Ralph sat as stiffly as he could, trying not to give in to the searing pain, but it was too much. He felt himself slowly crumpling, his hurt body folding in against hers. He felt it as her arm came up across him, pulling him down, pulling his head to rest against her breast, her racing heart.
CHAPTER FOUR
There was blood everywhere. It was frozen into the fabric of her dress, stiff and black. It was on his head and face and clothes and beneath her frozen fingernails. Still, she was calm, determined he would not die. And then she saw the house, and a face at the window.
There was a moment of utter stillness in which she took in every detail, the weight of Ralph in her arms, the house, the face at the window, stricken with terror, the horse, its broken leg, realizing now that the cracking sound on the ice had been bone not ice. She saw herself, her hair wild around her head, her hands chill and raw, her skirt light, the hem spilling her jewels in the snow. She saw them standing in the yard, snow up to the iron wheel hubs, the horses’ heads drooping in exhaustion and pain, the house itself. The house.
It’s like a clean white shirt, she thought. A clean white shirt hanging on the back of a door.
A neat, columned porch, a warm rust light through drawn curtains, the turn of a chair left out long past summer. Details. She couldn’t see the whole of it, couldn’t see the point at which the peaked roof met. But it
